LETTERS ON TREES. 



with the habitudes of the Elm, the death of such a 

 tree from such an accident as that mentioned by Dr 

 Carpenter, need not have been considered almost 

 inevitable." It would not have been so considered by 

 the patriarch Job : — " There is hope of a tree, if it be 

 cut down, that it will sprout again, and that the tender 

 branch thereof will not cease. Though the root thereof 

 wax old in the ground, and the stock thereof die in the 

 ground ; yet, through the scent of water, it will bud 

 and bring forth boughs like a plant."* 



11. The other instance is derived from the struc- 

 ture and constitution of the Cactaceoe : — 



" The doctrine in question is entirely inapplicable to the 

 case of the leafless Phanerogamia, such as the Cactacece. The 

 succulent mass of which their stems are composed, is obviously 

 homologous with that general cellular basis, of which the axis 

 of all the higher plants consists at an early stage of their 

 development, and from which the leaves are developed where- 

 ever they exist; whilst its foliaceous surface performs the 

 functions of the leaf, the two organs not being here separated, 

 nor their functions specialised. Now, it cannot but be ad- 

 mitted, that it is this cellular mass which in the Cactace^ 

 constitutes the plant; since here no separate leaves are evolved. 

 And further, we must regard the whole as one integer, unless 



* Chap. xiv. 7, 8, 9. — The French rendering of the last clause 

 (ver. 9) whether more paraphrastic than ours or not, probably 

 better expresses the idea present in the mind of the writer, and is 

 certainly more in keeping with the quotation just made from the 

 Book of Trees : — " Des qu'il sentira Feau, il regermera et produira 

 des branches, comme un arbre nouvellement plante." 



